jhc moulds
Hi Dino chums
Your right the jhclassic's moulds did have a few anomalies.The jhc moulds were from supposedly a 206,which was a handmade car,so there may have been discrepencies from car to car anyway.Most replacement panels for the dino are supplied oversize for fitting to individual cars!
For my car I re-made the mould for the boot/engine engine cover and have finished them the correct sizes and with the correct 7 vents. The doors do differ in size as you have said by about 5mm but I will correct this too. As to the droppy nose I know some have this and some dont-maybe a sagging nose is from incorrect storage before fitting,I dont know. The very front of the jhc shell doesn't sit on the chasis and is only supported by the bonded in floor so I suppose this could sag over time? Or may have been bonded in incorrectly? Again I have cut all the front floor/wheel well away and have resolved this on my car. Extra supports have gone in for mounting the front bumpers and to strengthen this area.
As to being some 3" shorter on the nose,I'm not to sure about.Alot was talked about this in the italian exoctica replica forum some years back and a guy on there listed every fault with the jhc and,as he owned both a real dino and a jhc he had the chance to compare the two side by side.He found the jhc was slightly shorter but by only 14mm overall, and actually had a identicle 206 wheel base!! Width wise it was around 4mm smaller overall. But this could be down to shrinkage in the moulds. A 4000mm shell would end up only 3980mm with just 0.5% shrinkage! And think if the mould shrinks by this amount,then you shell is already smaller before the shell itself shrinks! This is why patternmakers make the patterns biggar in the first place-so the finished item will be the correct size after casting.I should know as I'm a pattern maker.One thing you didn't mention was the rear wheel arch-this is from a 206. Apparently the later 246 had a slightly more rounded front edge.
If you read any ferrari books on the 206 and 246 the latter did grow in lenght and width anyway.I know the cascu moulds are more realistic as I've chatted with him and they were in fact taken from a 246.But in reality if the average guy in the street saw one would he know?
ian
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